


Know No Shame

by sulfuric



Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Exes, Getting Back Together, Light Angst, M/M, Snowed In, Weddings, a lot of sitting on the floor and dissecting your failed relationship, oh my!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:35:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27919084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sulfuric/pseuds/sulfuric
Summary: It's a winter wonderland wedding, baby! You can bet that Thomas isn't feeling the magic in the air when he's spending his holiday vehemently avoiding the brother of the bride that dumped him a year and a half ago (who by way, he's still in love with). So it's only natural that the universe conspires against him and deposits said ex at his doorstep and promptly seals that very door with a wall of snow like a big, cosmic kiss. Is it a Christmas miracle, or is it twenty-four consecutive hours of theyou better watch out?vine on repeat in Thomas' head? If he survives, he'll let you know.
Relationships: Harriet/Sonya | Elizabeth "Lizzy" (Maze Runner), Newt/Thomas (Maze Runner), Teresa Agnes/Brenda (Maze Runner)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 56
Collections: Maze Runner Secret Santa 2020





	Know No Shame

**Author's Note:**

  * For [comebacknow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/comebacknow/gifts).



> Merry Christmas, Bia! I hope you enjoy your fic and that you have a lovely holiday. This was so much fun to write! ^_^

Thomas doesn’t mind being single. He’s been at it for just shy of a year and a half, now, so he can safely say he’s gotten the hang of it. If, you know, getting the hang of it includes getting the overwhelming urge to cry at random points throughout the day, everyday, learning how to turn off the  _ memories _ feature on just about every app on his phone, and making up an excuse to bail out on the dates Teresa sets him up on just so he can sit alone in his apartment and stare at the same page of a book for three hours straight. 

Okay, sue him. Maybe he minds being single. It’s not exactly fun being alone for the first time since, jesus, fucking  _ high school.  _ And it’s especially not fun when the rest of his friends are all disgustingly in love. But you know, he’s dealing. He’s surviving. He’s finally gotten to a point where he can handle it. Not well, mind you—but he can handle the new equilibrium his life has oh so morosely settled into.

So obviously, it’s only natural that that progress all flies out the fucking window when Sonya and Harriet decide to get married.

It’s December 27th, and Thomas is sitting in the chalet of a ski lodge he’s already forgotten the name of, huddled as close to the fire as he can physically manage without technically being inside of it. 

He thinks he’d like to be inside of it.

“You’re really not going to do  _ any  _ skiing?” Teresa is not impressed. She’s nursing a cup of hot chocolate close to her face, bits of snow matted into her braids quickly melting by the heat of the fire. Thomas shrugs noncommittally, and Teresa gives him a  _ look.  _ “You know that the pass and the rentals are included in your cabin pass, right?”

He does in fact know this. It was one of the few, few things that had made him think,  _ oh, maybe this trip won’t be so bad _ when he’d booked his package. But shortly after, he’d remembered that Newt was on the snowboarding team in college. Hence—

“So what, you’re just gonna sit here the whole time? Christ, Thomas, it’s a big fucking hill. You probably wouldn’t even see him.”

Thomas sighs. “I didn’t bring my snowpants,” he says casually, as if he hadn’t rehearsed that exact line in the mirror that very morning. Teresa rolls her eyes but doesn’t push it further. Thomas sighs again and meets her gaze for the first time since she’d come over—and immediately regrets it when he sees the furrow of her brow and the downturn of her lips.

“Don’t,” he says, suddenly feeling like crying.

“I’m not going to,” she says, “I just—”

“Teresa. Please.” He looks back at the fire, willing himself not to think about it.  _ Fire,  _ he thinks, staring resolutely at the flicker of the flames _. Flames, bonfire, smores, camping, stargazing, trying to point out all the constellations to Newt that time that—fuck.  _

He’s miserably failing at not thinking about it when Brenda comes over and hands him a steaming styrofoam cup. “You looked miserable so I got you a hot chocolate,” she says plainly, sitting down beside Teresa and swinging her legs over her lap. 

Thomas sips his drink so he doesn’t have to roll his eyes. “Thanks, Bren.” And then, because he is supposed to be  _ dealing  _ and  _ handling  _ and  _ being a normal fucking person,  _ he adds, “slopes any good?”

Brenda smiles brightly and immediately goes in on a tangent about how she and Teresa had spent the better part of their morning sticking to the bunny slopes just so they could watch the unmitigated disaster that was Rachel trying to teach Ben how to ski, and Thomas feels a rush of relief at how _normal_ the conversation is. He can forget, just for a second, where he is and why he’s not on the slopes making fun of Ben, too. He can imagine himself sat on the top of the hill, squinting down at the far-off image of Ben’s windmilling arms as Brenda laughs, wolf-whistling. Teresa would snort into his shoulder, too much second-hand embarrassment to watch. Then Thomas would cringe as Ben topples over sideways down the hill, and Newt would look over at him and say, _should we call for the medics, then?_ And Thomas would—

_ Fuck.  _

“Thomas?” 

“Hm?” He looks up, shaken from his daydream to see Teresa and Brenda looking at him expectantly—the former with a hint of concern, the latter with amusement. 

“Earth to Major Tom,” Brenda says, flicking him square on the forehead. He flinches, lethargic and nearly a second late.

“Ow,” he complains, “what?” 

Teresa gives Brenda a look. “I said we’re heading back out,” she says, “I’ll text you when we’re grabbing dinner?” 

He forces his most convincing smile. “Yeah, sounds good.” Teresa nods and looks like she wants to say something else, but then Brenda is pulling her away with one hand and shooting Thomas some finger guns with the other, so he just laughs and tells them to have fun before he is alone, again. 

He sits there and sulks for a little while longer, hot chocolate churning too sweetly in his stomach. At least the fire is nice. It wouldn’t be so bad to camp out here all day—but then he sees someone across the room in orange snow pants flipping their head over to gather their hair—dark, much too long and too curly to be Newt’s,  _ false alarm _ —into a ponytail and he remembers that while, yes, any of his friends could walk in at any moment, so could his ex-boyfriend. And that is a thought that nearly makes the hot chocolate come right back up, so he books it out of there, ditching his cup in a trash can on the way out. 

His cabin is on the outskirts of the block reserved for Sonya and Harriet’s guests, sitting at the base of one of the more unkempt hills. It takes him a solid fifteen minutes to trudge out there and he realizes, grimly, that it might actually be the furthest cabin from  _ anything  _ on the property. It feels fitting: keep the loveless grinch as far from the celebrations as possible. 

And okay, maybe Newt is single, too, but he’s the brother of one of the brides so it’s  _ different,  _ and—and okay. Okay, Thomas doesn’t even  _ know  _ if Newt is single. This realization hits him just as he locks the door behind him, keys clanging onto the table as he drops them without really trying to. Okay. No, no—he knows Newt is rooming with Minho, because Minho told him that. Newt’s not  _ bringing  _ anyone. But that—that doesn’t mean he’s not  _ with  _ anyone. Cool, that’s not something he’d thought to torture himself with before. 

Well, at least he can sulk in the luxurious privacy of his own cabin.

Thomas does in fact sulk in the luxurious privacy of his own cabin, but not for long before he falls asleep, fully clothed at two in the afternoon. Being unconscious is great for not thinking about how you’re still in love with your ex-boyfriend, evidently. Even better than sulking. Don’t get him wrong, Thomas is definitely a fan of staring at the corner of the room and wondering how the fuck people build log cabins, but there truly is nothing better than waking up after the sun sets, utterly zonked out of your mind, and realizing that you just burnt a whole five hours not having to think about your miserable little life.

Then of course, you immediately think of your miserable little life, and realize that there’s drool crusted onto your face and that you have three missed calls from your best friend you were supposed to grab dinner with and that your stomach is, in fact, screaming at you for sustenance. 

_ Happy holidays,  _ Thomas thinks groggily, already pre-exhausted at how little sleep he’s going to get tonight. He doesn’t even feel all that rested from his nap, just out of it and disoriented from the lack of light coming into the room. He takes a second to sit up, dizzy, and wipes the drool off his cheek the best he can before he goes to call Teresa back. 

She picks up almost immediately. “Hey, you flaky bitch.”

He groans. “I fell asleep.” Teresa hums on the other end of the line, unconvinced, and Thomas flops back onto the pillow, just shy of braining himself on the headboard. “I’m sorry, Reese.” Just to drive the point home, his stomach grumbles loudly.

“I knocked on your door, like,  _ so  _ loud.”

“Shit, really?” Thomas glances up to the front door, as if there would be some physical indicator of this. Obviously, there is nothing but a door. “You think Brenda put sleeping pills in my hot chocolate or something?”

Teresa snorts. “Why the fuck would she do that?” she asks, trying to sound incredulous but mostly just laughing instead. “What possible reason would she—” Thomas hears a muffled voice in the background and Teresa laughs sharply, pulling away from the phone. “Thomas thinks you drugged him.” He smiles to himself as he waits for her to come back and say, “she thinks you’re trying to slander her good name in order to cause a ruckus at the rehearsal dinner tomorrow.”

“I think Brenda’s fully capable of slandering her own name, thank you very much.”

Teresa snorts again, then half-groans and says, “You made me get tea all over myself.”

He puts a hand to his chest even though he knows she can’t see it. “I am so,  _ so  _ sorry.” 

There’s a crackle over the line as she sighs and tells him to fuck off. “Anyway, we’re calling it an early night, but I’ll see you for breakfast tomorrow. And some of the boys ended up joining us for dinner, so we gave Minho an order of chicken fingers to drop off for you since his place is on the way. Kind of.”

Thomas could cry all over again. “You’re the best,” he says, the inside of his cheeks  _ hurting  _ with how hard he’s salivating. Then, a laugh. “And god, yeah, I know. You’d think the fuckin’... you’d think this was like, the designated single person cabin.”

“Right? Or maybe like, the one for the most annoying couple so they’re far away from everyone else and no one has to hear them fuck or whatever.”

“Well in that case, it should’ve been you and Brenda in this one.”

She scoffs, scandalized, then  _ tsks  _ lightly.  _ “Anyway,  _ Min left about ten minutes ago so he should be there soon. I hope. He and Gally were flirting the whole fucking meal so hopefully he didn’t get distracted and leave your dinner in a bush while they boned or something.”

“Thanks, I hate it,” Thomas says, “I’ll be sure to give him hell when I’m eating cold chicken in two hours.”

Teresa laughs and tells him she’ll let him go so he can eat, and then the line goes dead and he is alone, again. He toddles over to the bathroom to splash some water on his face and avoids the exhausted, purple lined eyes in the mirror. All things aside, he is really fucking excited for this chicken right now. He was already anxious about having to go out into dining area and potentially seeing Newt, so it’s a huge bonus to have his food hand-delivered. He  _ knows  _ he’s not going to be able to avoid him the whole trip—he certainly won’t be able to avoid him tomorrow at the rehearsal dinner or the day after during the actual wedding—but if he can put off the awkwardness and the yearning and the poorly healed wounds ripping open once more for even  _ one more night,  _ then Thomas is going to call that a win. 

It’s another ten minutes before he starts to get worried about Minho (okay, if he’s being completely transparent here, it’s really just the food he’s worried about) so he pulls out his phone to text him a  _ delivery boy, where u at _ when there’s a knock at the door, three raps quick and loud. 

The fact that he knows these particular knocks and the exact person they belong to does not register before he is unlocking the door and swinging it open. The knowledge only comes, three seconds delayed, with a slap to the face that jostles a small, soft exhale out of his mouth and onto the floor at his feet. 

At Newt’s feet. 

Thomas realizes two things very quickly. One is that the first thing Newt has said to him in seventeen months is, “Chicken fingers and fries, vinegar on the side?”, and two is that Newt still remembers that he likes to dip his fries in vinegar. Thomas just gapes.

“I, uh—so Minho has banished me from our cabin so he and Gally can, uh—”

Thomas’ eyebrows raise. “Finally,” he says before he can stop himself, mouth clamping shut over the last syllable.  _ Fuck.  _ Even after all this time, it is  _ so  _ easy to just pretend nothing has changed.

Newt blinks, smiling just for a flash of a second, imperceptible. “I know. Jesus. Um, anyway—” He cuts himself off, eyes falling down to his snow-soaked books, uncharacteristically shy. “Listen, I know this isn’t, um, ideal, but.” He sighs deeply, then looks at Thomas straight on. “Could I… stay here until they—until they’re not going at it? I  _ really  _ don’t feel like knowing anything about Gally’s bedroom tendencies, or Minho’s, for that matter, and I—I, uh, I got you food, so—”

“Teresa got me food.” He feels like a dick before the words even leave his mouth.

Newt quirks an eyebrow. “Okay, yes, but I brought—” he pauses, and it looks like he’s struggling with whatever comes next. His eyes drop again and he closes his eyes, sighing again. “I walked halfway here with it through the snow,”—he gestures to his now-damp hair with his free hand, head tilting back to allude to the dense rain of snow coming down nonstop—“and then I went all the way back when I realized they forgot the vinegar.  _ So,”  _ he punctuates casually even though it’s the least casual statement Thomas thinks he’s ever heard, eyes widening as he realizes that,  _ oh,  _ Newt  _ really  _ remembers he likes to dip his fries in vinegar—

“I’m… please?”

Thomas is frozen, hand still wrapped around the door handle. A breeze flows by and they both shiver, gazes locked wide. It’s only seven. If Minho and Gally are hooking up starting  _ now— _ well, actually, starting like ten minutes ago—then there’s no way they can possibly go all night. Gally will go back to his own cabin, and Newt will leave, and everything will be fine. 

And still— 

“Is there nowhere else you can go?” The words come out pained, and he feels like even  _ more  _ of a dick, but it’s in this moment that he recognizes the dread in his stomach as  _ please don’t make me do this.  _

Newt exhales a silent laugh, humorless, and shakes his head. “You think you were my first choice? You think I  _ want  _ to—with my—Thomas.” 

The  _ Thomas  _ feels cold, stilted—almost foreign coming out of Newt’s mouth—and it makes him feel dizzy all over again, but he stands his ground, only slightly leaning into the door. “We have a  _ lot  _ of friends here right now, Newt.”

“Listen, Tommy—”

“Sonya,” he fires, hoping the way he flinches at the nickname isn’t too obvious.  _ Nevermind, I take it back, call me Thomas again, please. Anything but Tommy.  _ He tries his best to ignore the empty, pained flutter that lingers in his chest as Newt levels him with a look.

“You want me to bunk with my  _ sister  _ two nights before her  _ wedding?” _

Okay, well that’s fair. Still, Thomas sighs, annoyed. “Teresa?”

“Again, rooming with her girlfriend. And judging by the way the two of them were squirming at dinner tonight—”

“Stop, stop.” He squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head. He tries again. “Alby?”

“Isn’t getting here until tomorrow morning.”

Thomas exhales. “Okay, what about—”

Newt cuts him off, words clipped. “Would it really be that excruciating to spend one night with me?” He’s lost his steam by the end of it, deflated in what Thomas can only read as genuine  _ hurt.  _

Thomas, in an act of what appears to be either complete inconsideration or a full descent into madness,  _ snorts _ , and says, “Well, going off past experience…”

Newt turns red, and Thomas is sure it has nothing to do with the cold. “Not  _ that kind of night,  _ jesus.” He shakes his head and looks around the room as if searching for something he evidently doesn’t find, arms circling around his own waist defensively, huddled. “I miss you,” he admits quietly, to the floor rather than to Thomas himself. “I miss… I didn’t just lose my boyfriend, I lost my best friend, too.”

Thomas frowns. “You and Minho talk like everyday. You’re  _ rooming  _ together.”

Newt finally looks up, and when he does it’s with an expression of confusion, equal parts fond and offended. “I mean you.”

“Oh.” 

The silence hangs heavy between them for a moment, Thomas struggling to either soften and let him in or to slam the door in his face altogether. He resists the urge to tell Newt that it’s pretty audacious to go on about missing him when  _ he’s  _ the one that left  _ him.  _ But in the end, Thomas is apparently always going to have a soft spot for those big, stupid brown eyes, because he exhales then and there is no  _ fuck off  _ to be heard on his breath.

Newt is evidently encouraged by something in the shift of Thomas’ expression, because then he breaks the silence, holds out the takeout container between them and says, “Now will you eat your stupid goddamned chicken and just let me sit on your floor for a few hours?”

Thomas still hates himself, and Minho, and Gally, and maybe even Teresa right now in this moment, but he finds it in himself to take the stupid goddamned chicken and let Newt inside, anyway. 

They begin to realize, merely three hours into the awkward, stilted silence, that this impromptu little hangout will not be ending on schedule. Thomas is counting the freckles on his left arm and trying not to think about their last attempt at conversation (Newt had huffed about  _ at least Minho could have done me the courtesy of letting me grab some of my stuff  _ and Thomas had commented, stupidly,  _ yeah it looked like you had a lot of bags with you  _ and Newt had given him an odd look while Thomas  _ didn’t  _ say that Newt was always a light packer; what happened, what changed—) when Newt suddenly scoffs down at his phone, incredulous. 

“You absolute  _ fucker,”  _ he spits. 

Thomas looks up. “What?”

Newt lets out a long, groaning sigh and lets his head thunk heavily into his knees before he finally turns to Thomas and says, short and clipped: “Gally’s staying the night.” He punctuates the statement with perhaps the most bitter smile Thomas has ever seen, and he tries not to think about the small, stabbing hurt in his chest. 

“Oh.”

“I know. I’ll—” Newt stands up, dusting off the back of his pants, movements sharp and annoyed. “I’ll find somewhere else to sleep, don’t worry, this was stupid anyw—” he stops himself short as he opens the door and a flurry of snow blows in against his shins, skirting off the top of the ground which is now, as it seems from Thomas’ limited vantage point, half a foot higher than normal. 

Newt’s grip on the door tightens. “You’re bloody joking,” he mutters.

Thomas leans forward weakly from where he’s leaning against the wall and sees that, yes, there’s a solid six inches of snow at the foot of the door threatening to spill inside. “Shit.” 

“It’s. It’s fine, I’ll just—” He leans out the door, hair blowing wildly in the breeze— _ he let it get long again,  _ Thomas notes—and peers around the corner of the cabin towards the light of the main buildings that Thomas knows are already dim, this late and this far out. Newt’s fingers twitch on the doorframe. “I’ll—”

“Newt. Just—”  _ Just stay, because I know how much you hate the cold and I know how much you hate it when you wake up and your boots are still wet and if I know anything about you I know that you only brought the one pair, so please, just stay. Just stay because even if I hate you for how it ended, I really don’t hate you at all and I just want you to not have wet shoes in the morning. Just stay, because really how awful will one night be? _

“Just stay. It’s—it’s fine.” It comes out as an exhale, and Thomas feels like dry-heaving as Newt stands there, quietly regarding him from the corner of his eye, feet still facing forward into the night. The sliver of his face that Thomas can see is strained, deliberating. 

Then, finally, the door shuts and Newt breathes a tiny, quiet, “Okay,” and then that’s that. 

Except it isn’t, because there are a million little complexities that shatter in Thomas’ mind the moment that Newt shuts himself in the bathroom to wash up without another word. One, for fucking starters, they’re going to be sharing a bed. It’s not a tiny bed, thank god, so it’s not like they’re going to be on top of each other or anything like that, but Thomas—who slept for five hours this afternoon, thank you very much—is going to have to spend the entire night dead still on his back, arms straight at his sides, while Newt lies there beside him. 

And this is exactly what happens, two very separate showers and one narrowly avoided anxiety attack later. They mumble an awkward goodnight and Newt promptly turns over on his side, facing away from Thomas as the room falls silent once more. 

He’s been here a thousand times before, but the stark contrast between the state of things now and how it was back then nearly knocks the breath out of Thomas’ chest, just lying there. If it were only a mere eighteen months ago, he could shuffle over and bury his face into the back of Newt’s neck and wrap his arms around him. He remembers it so clearly that he can practically  _ feel  _ Newt’s legs tangling softly with his own, and Thomas wants it so bad that his eyes fill with tears. He wasn’t sure it would be possible to feel even  _ more  _ pathetic than he has this entire night, but he reaches a brave new low when he realizes that he’s lying there, frozen silent beside his ex-boyfriend, trying not to cry  _ not  _ because he like, wants to get railed or anything like that like a normal person, but because he wants to  _ cuddle.  _ He wants to hold and to be held—to feel secure and loved and at home in a way that he hasn’t since Newt walked out his door that awful Spring morning. He wants the familiarity and the safety of knowing the ins and outs of each other, of being able to go to sleep knowing that when he wakes up, Newt will be there beside him, smiling softly in his sleep. He wants to spend his days knowing that he won’t be alone when he goes home. He wants to be able to get a stupid call at work and be able to text Newt about it at lunch. He wants to be able to grab a pair of tickets for a concert or a movie and not have to wonder if he’s going to need to sell one of them in the end. He wants— 

He wants  _ Newt.  _ He wants his laugh and his smile and his banter and his stupid, stupid hands. He wants to hear all his opinions about the weird British tv shows he watches and the weather and music on the radio and any other inane thing he wants to talk about—Thomas wants his voice: sending him random voice messages throughout the day because he’s too lazy to type; or pitching up into the clipped vowels of his accent when he gets really excited about something; or whispering low in his ear and pushing him over the edge—

He just wants Newt. As simple as that, he just wants him. It is painfully obvious, now: after all this time—and after he left Thomas eight timezones away, shattered and alone with barely any more than a goodbye—he’s still just as in love with him as he always was.

It’s only when he hears Newt’s breaths become slow and deep, rasping just slightly, that Thomas allows the tears to fall. 

It takes him a long, long time to fall asleep, and when he wakes up at 6:15am the next morning, he feels like he hasn’t slept at all. He knows that it would still be dark outside at this point, and that the only window in this cabin is a small one, high in the corner of the bathroom, but the lack of light in the room is still disorienting all the same. He nearly contemplates going back to sleep, but then he catches Newt’s sleeping form—unmoved from the exact position he fell asleep in—out of the corner of his eye and he startles so violently that he knows, before his heartbeat has even left his ears, that he is  _ up  _ for the day. 

Well, okay. He hadn’t brought his snowpants (on purpose) but he  _ had  _ packed his sneakers (also on purpose), so if he’s going to be awake, at least he can be productive about it. The universe has gifted him with exactly one (1) healthy coping mechanism, and Thomas will be damned if now isn’t the time to use it. He tiptoes into the bathroom as quietly as possible and changes into his thermal running gear, then tightly laces his shoes and does some stretching that is most definitely not thorough enough. On a normal day he’d take the time, but each second that passes with Newt sleeping soundly in the other room is another second that he needs to  _ go.  _

So of course, when Thomas opens the door to the cabin, he is met with a wall of snow completely filling the open space of the doorway. 

He sort of just stands there for a minute or two, staring at it openly as his brain computes what he’s seeing. He looks at the door, then back to the snow—yeah, no, that’s not. Hm. Interesting. 

The cold must be seeping into the room because he hears stirring as Newt groans softly from the sheets then, bed creaking beneath him as he sits up. Thomas chances a wide-eyed look back to Newt and watches him go through the stages of grief: first the confusion of waking up early, then the automatic, heart-wrenching acceptance of  _ oh, it’s just Tommy out for his run,  _ and then the double take of  _ wait, that’s not—that’s not a thing anymore,  _ and then at last the  _ triple  _ take of when he finally registers the fact that they are  _ fucking snowed in.  _

“You’re kidding,” he says throatily, which is apparently all Thomas needs to snap out of his daze and into an anxiety attack. 

The room is already nearly pitch dark, only light coming from the clock on the night stand and the thin strip of light at the  _ top  _ of the door—but Thomas’ vision narrows all the same, breath going shallow as he squeezes his eyes shut, tight. They’re snowed in. They’re snowed in, which is bad and confining and maybe deathly if it goes on long enough—they have water from the bathroom but they surely don’t have any food and Thomas is already sort of hungry, which is bad, and also there’s the  _ wedding  _ and the rehearsal which is—holy shit, which is  _ tonight,  _ which they’re not going to be able to make it to and then Sonya and Harriet will be crushed. He has his phone, and his charger—which he nearly  _ didn’t,  _ since Rachel almost forgot to give it back the other day—which is good. That’s good. That’s good, but also they’re still snowed in and more pertinently, fucking  _ they’re _ fucking snowed in. They as in plural, as in Thomas is trapped inside a tiny cabin for a single person with his ex-boyfriend. He circles back to this and the part of his brain that he has spent years painstakingly training to have a shred of rationality is like,  _ it’s gonna be okay, Thomas, you should employ a coping mechanism!  _ But the only coping mechanism that will remove him and his brain from this trainwreck of a situation is  _ going for a run,  _ which he can’t do because there is a solid wall of snow blocking the only exit to this building. Somewhere in the static of his mind he wonders distantly if only having the one exit is a fire hazard and if snow can put out fire and if his cabin catches on fire will he die? Or will it melt the snow? Is Sonya and Harriet’s wedding going to become a combination wedding and funeral for one of the brides’ brother and his weird anxious ex-boyfriend? Is he going to die with everyone under the assumption that he and Newt hooked up again and they went out all crispy and balls deep instead of knowing that really Thomas cried over wanting to be the big spoon and burned to death on the other side of the room? What if— 

“Tommy,  _ hey.”  _ Thomas blinks and Newt is standing in front of him with heavy, rank morning breath heaving into his face. The smell alone is enough to snap Thomas back into reality, nose scrunching up instinctively as he blinks up at Newt, wide-eyed at the mere proximity—they can’t be further than six inches apart, and Thomas notes blankly, as an aside, that this is the closest they’ve physically been since the last time they kissed.

“Uh,” is all he can say.

Newt looks hesitant, out of his element. “Can—can I?” And for a second Thomas just stares because  _ is he asking if he can  _ kiss  _ me?  _ But then Newt’s eyebrows furrow and he tilts his chin down to Thomas’ hand, which is—oh, which is violently shaking with his fingernails that he can, all of a sudden, feel digging sharply into the line of his thumb. Thomas suppresses how dumb he feels and nods weakly, not trusting his voice, and Newt gingerly takes his hand in his own, sliding his fingers underneath Thomas’ so they’re not piercing his skin anymore.

“We’ll figure it out,” he says softly, voice still thin and catching on sleep, even though his eyes are wide and alert.  _ We’ll figure it out  _ is exactly what Thomas said when Newt got offered a job back in England after graduation, and  _ we’ll figure it out  _ is exactly what they didn’t do. 

Overall, it doesn’t help Thomas’ anxiety to know that Newt easily remembers yet another one of Thomas’ rituals, so he just sits on the edge of the bed and reminds himself that it is not objectively weird to know that your friend of sixteen years likes epsom salt in their bath, (which the resort has apparently stocked this cabin with) even if they’re also your ex-boyfriend, while Newt runs the water in the other room. He teeters dangerously on the edge of Feeling Cared For, and staves off the rising hope in his chest by telling himself, quite unkindly, that this is just a pity bath because Newt feels bad that Thomas has spent twenty-four years on this earth without somehow being able to get a handle on the part of his brain that thinks he is being hunted by a tiger at all times. 

(He knows it isn’t true, and that Newt would never fault him for the things he can’t control, but he tells it to himself all the same.)

“It’s ready,” Newt calls. Thomas sighs and tells himself to stand up. Nothing happens and he closes his eyes, willing himself to move. The distance is short, laughably so, but that doesn’t change out the lead for limbs and he continues to sit there, exhausted and wrought from the last ten minutes. It’s like this often, after. He knows he’s going to be useless for the rest of the day, but if he can just muster the energy to make it the ten feet from the bed to the bath he knows that he’ll survive the rehearsal dinner—that is, if they can even make it there. 

Newt idles in the doorway to the bathroom. “Do you need—”

“I’m good,” Thomas clips, standing suddenly and breezing past Newt before he even knows what’s happening. Newt turns around to face him, inching backwards out of the threshold between the two rooms and giving Thomas a cautious look. 

_ God, this is embarrassing.  _ “I’m good,” he repeats, “thanks.” He wishes he sounded more grateful as he shuts the door—not in Newt’s face but damn near close—but he cannot be moved to expend the energy on masking his mortification as he ever so gracefully melts to the floor behind the closed door. He slots his head between his knees, holding himself steady as he fumbles shakily with his shoelaces.

It takes a couple of minutes but he eventually gets himself into the bath, clothes in a heap on the floor beside it. There are bubbles—hints of mint, eucalyptus, and maybe something like chamomile?—and there is epsom salt, dissolved and soothing as Thomas sinks down to his nose, entire body decompressing in the warmth with a violent shiver. 

He lies there for a good twenty minutes before Newt knocks on the door—so softly that Thomas almost doesn’t hear it over the slowly receding static in his brain, only the familiar pattern drawing his attention in the end—and says, “Could I, uh—I need to use the toilet?”

Thomas’ eyes snap open. “Oh. Uhh—”

“I know it’s not great timing but I don’t exactly have any other—”

“No, no, that’s fine. I, uh. I won’t look.” He feels stupid saying it seeing as he’s seen Newt’s dick perhaps a hundred times, (okay, not thinking about  _ that _ ) but he fully covers his eyes anyway as Newt comes in, muttering something about not looking either. 

And that was going to be that, but then Thomas goes and says “hey,” and Newt must hear the quiet plea in his voice because he turns almost immediately. 

“Do you—do you want me to stay?”

The answer is nearly a whisper. “Yeah.”

They don’t talk, but Newt sits on the floor against the cabinets of the vanity and they share the silence together, the most peaceful and the least terrible stretch of time since Newt’s arrival last night. It’s nice. It’s  _ easy.  _ Thomas tries not to like it too much. 

Eventually, Newt orders Thomas out and back to bed  _ (you’re gonna bloody drown if you keep drifting off in there)  _ and Thomas—despite his so-called ‘prolific stubbornness’ constantly cited by everyone he knows—does not fight it. One, he is truly and fully exhausted, both physically and mentally. Two, he barely slept last night anyway. And three, the less time he is conscious, the less time he has to work himself up again about being trapped inside a cabin with his ex-boyfriend (who by the way, he’s still in love with). 

He’s already halfway unconscious by the time he feels the bed dip softly beside him, and he falls fully into the hazy dark before he can find it in himself to care. 

He dreams, papery thin and distant, but he dreams all the same. He is standing in his living room back home, watching the snow gather on the windowsill. It feels vivid and lived-in, like a memory, and then he realizes that is  _ is  _ one—Winter, two years ago. Maybe a week before Christmas; the rhythmic knocks on the front door signaling Newt’s arrival due to sound out any minute, now. They’re still in love, in this one, and neither of them have any idea of the job offer that will pull Newt across the ocean and out of Thomas’ arms, ruining them both. 

There is a knock on the door, but when he opens it, there is nothing but white. 

When he wakes up, the bed is cold beside him. 

He actually feels refreshed, and though his chest still feels hollow and raw, the static in his head is gone, soft and grounding silence welcoming him back into the waking world. He blinks the sleep out of his eyes and realizes, fully, that he is alone and it is quiet—is Newt gone? Did the snow melt already? He’s halfway to working himself up to trying the door again when he tunes into a soft, muffled voice floating out from behind the bathroom door.

_ Newt.  _ Probably on the phone with Sonya, or something. Thomas grabs his phone and squints as the screen brightens—only noon. No shit the snow didn’t melt in five hours. He’s about to spend some time feeling stupid for even hoping, but then the mass of notifications catch his eye instead. 

There’s a couple messages from Brenda, a few from Minho, a good couple dozen from the group chat with all of their friends, and no less than three missed calls and sixteen texts from Teresa.

He starts with those first. 

**from: saint mother teresa**

(8:09am)  _ me and brenda are in the lobby, lmk when you’re on your way!  _ 😊 

(8:17am)  _ you coming?  _

(8:21am)  _ THOMAS  _

(8:21am)  _ thomas i swearto god  _

(8:23am)  _ PICK UP YOUR PHONE YOU NUT  _

(8:25am)  _ okay well we’re going without you _

(9:14am)  _ MINHO JUST TOLD ME YOU AND NEWT BUNKED TOGETHER LAST NIGHT???????? FGBFJDKLGFDGBSDSJGF ALL THE DETAILS WHEN YOU WAKE UP PLEEAASSEEEEEFNJENKERGHRDG _

(9:47am)  _ thomas _

(9:47am) screenshot_43603.jpg 

(9:47am)  _ ARE YALL REALLY SNOWED IN OR IS NEWT JUST MAKING EXCUSES?????????? _

(9:48am)  _ stop being asleep im going to kill you _

(10:33am)  _ lol are you guys gonna be able to come to the rehearsal???? _

(12:01pm) image_392400.jpg

(12:01pm)  _ it looks so fucking funny from the outside tom _

(12:01pm) _ come to the bathroom window _

(12:03pm)  _ hellllloooooooo _

Okay. So he missed breakfast—his stomach grumbles then to reiterate—and maybe everyone he knows thinks he and Newt hooked up? Fantastic. A slightly better second start to his day, which is saying a lot about the first try seeing as how much this sucks. Thomas suppresses a groan and tries to convince himself that Minho would have the tact not to go spewing on about Newt staying with Thomas to like, everyone. 

He thinks about how many messages were in the group chat and promptly shuts his phone off and shoves it under the blanket. 

_ Just deal with what you can control right now, Thomas,  _ he tells himself, sitting up and rolling his neck from side to side. The pillows here kind of suck. He can manage that right now by stretching. Much like he would if he was going to go for a run. Which, ha ha— 

“Oh, you’re up.” Newt is standing in the bathroom door like Thomas just caught him in the act of doing something horrible. (He tells him brain to mind its business when the word  _ adorable  _ comes to mind.) 

“Yeah.” His voice sounds like shit—croaky and full of phlegm—so he clears it awkwardly as Newt stares at the floor. 

“Teresa’s here.” He holds up two takeout containers and some plastic utensils wrapped in napkins. “Brenda, too. Brought us food.”

Thomas’ heart catches for a second then stutters on a moment later, flustered. He forgot how much he liked the way Newt says Teresa’s name, the way his accent curved around the word. It is only secondarily that he realizes what it is he actually  _ said.  _ “What?”

He tilts his head back casually. “They’re at the window.”

A yelling voice from outside: “Is he finally fucking awake?”  _ Ah, Brenda. _

“Thomas, come hang out with us!”  _ Teresa.  _

Thomas could cry. Actually, he just might. Newt slinks out of the way and busies himself with setting the food out on their little table while Thomas all but bounds out of bed, ignoring the cold sting shooting through his ankles and up his shins as he lands hard on the floor. 

“Hello?” he asks cautiously to the window, too high up for him to see the ground or anyone standing there. 

“You have to stand on the toilet,” Teresa says, a disembodied voice. 

He can nearly hear Brenda smirking. “Yeah, just don’t fall in.”

“Wow, thanks for the support,” he grumbles as he climbs up onto the seat, the plastic groaning beneath his weight. He stands there for a careful second, waiting for it to bow, but he seems to be steady. Then, the window:

“There he is!”

“Holy shit, hey!” As advertised, Teresa and Brenda are standing in the snow—only shin deep on this side of the cabin—and smiling wide.

“Hey, asshole.”

Thomas melts against the window frame—small and rectangular and only opening halfway; it does not give him much leeway to do so but he tries his best—and sighs, deeply. 

Teresa nods. “I know.”

(And she doesn’t, she really doesn’t, but Thomas can’t exactly divulge all the pitiful details with Newt in earshot, so he settles for a wholly pleasant seven minutes of light conversation and banter before he gets shuffled back inside to eat his lunch before it gets cold. As they leave, Brenda insists on reaching up to give him a frosty handshake in which he nearly gets his shoulder stuck in the window, and Teresa parts with a small grin that is equal parts sympathetic and shit-eating.

“Godspeed, Thomas.”

He can’t help but to smile right back. “Fuck you, Teresa.”)

Lunch is good. Lunch is good, and congenial, and maybe the first actively  _ good  _ interaction between the two of them since everything went to shit in the first place. Okay, maybe  _ good  _ is a stretch—eating chicken caesar wraps and softly laughing about Minho and Gally’s tumultuous will-they-won’t-they nonsense maybe doesn’t merit a full  _ good  _ status—but it’s fond which is good, generally, and so of course Thomas has to go and ruin it by blurting out something like “Hey, why did we break up?”

Newt blinks, recoiling just slightly from the hard shift in conversation, and Thomas feels his blood pressure drop. Maybe if he’s lucky, he can pass out and hit his head on the way down and just die. Just call it, right here and now. He’s about to backpedal and Newt’s about to open his mouth and everything is about to implode but then—then, beautifully then, thankfully then, god-willing then—

Then Minho is hollering outside at the window for them to come open up.

Newt is on his feet in a second, chair nearly toppling over behind him as the legs catch on the carpet. He pays it no mind as he speed-walks into the bathroom, not bothering to shut the door behind him as he climbs up onto the toilet and pulls the window open.

“You motherfucking piece of shit roommate,” he says in lieu of a greeting, low and growly as if he doesn’t want Thomas to hear. 

He hears it anyway, and a short bark of hysterical laughter escapes him despite the coil winding up in his chest. He buries his face into his hands and laughs a little more, tuning out of whatever the two of them begin to bicker about. It’s all very funny, now—the breakup, (okay, maybe not the breakup, that still takes his heart and rips it inside out, but he’s choosing to believe that it’s funny in this moment) the mountain of snow in front of their door, the fact that Newt was forced to come here and stay over in the first place—it’s just one ridiculous circumstance piling on top of the last one, like a shoddy ladder beckoning Thomas upwards to come and sit on the trophy ledge of  _ world’s worst way to spend your friend’s wedding.  _ There’s got to be some sort of reward for it all, in the end. 

Thomas takes their empty containers and stuffs them in the trash. The lid sits half open on top of them.  _ Yeah, seems about right.  _ He glances back to find Newt rolling his eyes as he crouches down to set two coffee cups on the bathroom counter. He doesn’t seem to notice Thomas watching, and huffs a  _ really, Minho?  _ as a single tanned hand appears inside the window frame and shoves a pack of condoms in Newt’s hands. 

Thomas flushes bright red and turns back to the table as Newt begrudgingly slips them into the pocket of his sweater and swats Minho’s hand away. Then he’s calling out, “Tommy, wanna come grab these?” and Thomas almost passes out again until he turns back and sees that Newt means the coffees he is now holding again and  _ not  _ the condoms. He nods and stutters lamely, shuffling over to take the drinks. 

“Hi, Thomas!” Minho says cheerily. 

He closes his eyes and decides, consciously, not to choose violence today. “Hello, Minho.”

Newt suppresses a smirk and hands the cups over. Just as Thomas is thinking he’s feeling mature about it, their fingertips brush and he feels electricity jolt across his skin like he’s fucking fifteen again. He goes and sits on the floor to drink his coffee, just for a change of scenery. He’s shuffled Newt’s chair out of the way so he can lean against the wall beside the front door, halfway under the table. He feels not entirely unlike a cat sitting in one of those enclosed trees, and he doesn’t entirely hate it.

He almost allows himself to think he just might get out of this unscathed when he tunes back into Newt and Minho’s conversation again.

“Is my sister alright?”

“Yeah, she thinks you’re an idiot.”

An scoff, incredulous. “Literally none of this is my fault.”

“No, not that.”

And then this is where Thomas can tell they’re having one of those silent conversations again, Newt’s eyes widening and narrowing as he shakes his head or lowers his eyebrows, mouth hanging open and lips twitching slightly as if he’s forming the words in his head. He rolls his eyes—not annoyed but  _ tired,  _ resigned—and stares off into the corner of the window ledge so he doesn’t have to meet Minho’s eyes, and Thomas knows this is bad. Newt has a couple of tells, and this is the one that means he knows you’re right. He won’t admit it—god, no, especially not to  _ Minho— _ but he’ll probably do what you say, anyway.

Which is why Thomas is just a tiny bit more prepared for it when Newt finally shuts the window, slinks back into the room, takes a long sip of his coffee, and says—with the same languidness and  _ fuck it  _ surrender as Jonh Mulaney saying  _ this might as well happen— _

“We broke up because it was less scary to call it quits than to try and maybe find out we wouldn’t have worked.”

Thomas can only just sit there and let his mouth hang open, completely dumbfounded and winded by the bluntness—and truth—of the statement. He tries and fails about fifteen times to string together a response to that, then with the thought of  _ okay, I guess we’re doing this,  _ he eventually lands on a quiet, broken, “Do you think we would have?”

Newt just frowns, nonchalance from the moment before completely vanished. “If we tried,” he offers softly, and Thomas suddenly finds himself crying. Newt looks conflicted, frozen up against the doorway of the bathroom like he wants to run over to Thomas but knows that that will just make it worse, so after a moment he settles on just sitting down where he is, mirroring Thomas with his legs pulled up to his chest as he leans against the wall. And just to make it worse, he says, “I would have tried. I wanted to try.”

Well, they’re in it now. 

Thomas puts down his coffee. “I didn’t—I didn’t want you to feel like you had to stay with me,” he says, so easily slipping back into the guilt he felt all those months ago when he thought Newt would resent him for making him stay despite the amazing opportunity—or for making him be tied down to someone else on a different continent, if he did take the job. It seems like a backwards, cobbled-together line of logic now, but he still feels it all the same.

Newt’s head falls to the side, just slightly, and his voice cracks as he speaks. “I  _ wanted  _ to stay with you,” he says, “That’s the only thing I ever wanted. I just—” His eyes widen then narrow, the words escaping him. “I wouldn’t even have  _ gone,  _ if you’d asked me to stay.”

Thomas scoffs, nearly inaudible. His mind flashes back to tearful fights about  _ opportunities  _ and  _ home  _ and  _ doing something with my life.  _ He fights the urge to make a snide comment.  _ Sure didn’t feel like that at the time.  _ “Why didn’t you  _ tell  _ me that?” he says instead.

Newt’s head  _ thunks  _ against the wall. “Come on, I—” He shrugs, letting out a humorless laugh. “I can’t. I wasn’t. I wasn’t gonna ask you to ask me to stay.”

Thomas frowns. “I wanted to ask you, but I didn’t because I didn’t want you to have to choose.” He pauses, defiance quickly giving way to resignment. “I don’t know. Maybe I was just scared of you leaving anyway. I don’t know. I don’t know. Or maybe it was just—”

“Less scary not to do it at all?”

A beat. Newt’s face is cracked wide open. Thomas is sure his looks the same. “Yeah,” he admits quietly, perhaps realizing the truth of it for the first time.

“Yeah.”

“Well, fuck.”

They both start laughing, and crying, and it’s all just—horribly upsetting and horribly funny and horribly tragic. Neither of them wanted to end it but they did, and now they’re here, a year and a half later trapped in a fucking cabin sitting on the floor sorting through the shattered bits of their relationship. It’s awful, it is, but the worst thing is that they didn’t even have to do it in the first place. If both of them—hell, if  _ one  _ of them—were just a little more up front about their feelings on the whole situation, they could have worked it out and stayed together. 

Or maybe not. Maybe they would have sucked at long distance and fallen apart, or maybe Newt would have rejected the job in England and he would have grown bitter about it and they would have unraveled that way.

Or maybe—and Thomas doesn’t allow himself to wonder on this for more than one, terrible second, but  _ maybe— _ maybe they would have been fine. Maybe they would have been  _ better,  _ and maybe this would have been  _ their  _ wedding all their friends would be attending if they’d just decided to stick it out a little longer. It worked for Sonya and Harriet, and they spent the first  _ year  _ of their relationship on different sides of the ocean. 

He takes the thought and removes it from his mind, forcibly. It doesn’t matter what  _ would  _ have happened, because this is the only thing that’s happened. This is right now, and this is real.

Newt is wiping the tears from his cheeks when Thomas tunes back into the now and the real, and he is suddenly filled with a longing so viscerally tangible that it nearly knocks the breath out of him. He is hurt—their breakup left him ruined in a way that he has only recently begun to truly start picking up the pieces—but he is, without a doubt, still in love with Newt. He never even wanted to  _ try  _ not being in love with Newt. And Newt—his heart isn’t quite as stubborn as Thomas’, that’s for sure, but he  _ wanted to try.  _ He  _ wanted Thomas to want him to stay.  _

And that’s the most hope Thomas has felt, perhaps in his entire life.

“Well, I wasn’t going to tell you this,” Newt starts, sighing as he runs a hand down his face, “But, uh. My work is transferring me.”

Thomas blinks. “Oh? Like a—like a promotion?” 

Newt presses his lips together tightly. “Yeah,” he says, taking a long sip of his coffee, “Yeah, uh. In Portland.” 

Thomas’ jaw nearly unhinges his mouth drops open so fast. He stutters around a few aborted syllables before simply sitting back and shutting his mouth,  _ desperate idiot  _ echoing around his skull a few times.  _ Fucking chill, dude.  _ After a beat or two he finally speaks, cautious. “But?”

Newt blinks. “Huh?”

“But what? There’s a but, right?”

“But nothing. That was the end of the statement.”

“Oh.”

A smile plays at his lips, the first one since this conversation nosedived. “Yeah. What did—what’d you think I was gonna say?”

Thomas breathes out a shaky breath, half sigh and half laugh. “I don’t fuckin’ know, man. That you, like, never wanted to see my face again or it was Portland,  _ Maine,  _ or that you’re coming back but you have, like, a long-term boyfriend or some shit like that?” He laughs it out but feels the burn of his cheeks when he says  _ boyfriend,  _ feels embarrassed at the truly momentous amount of hope that it isn’t true.

Newt snorts. “Good god, Tommy, I would never take a job that sent me to Maine,” he jokes, (Thomas noting both the nickname, again, and the fact that Newt failed altogether to acknowledge the boyfriend comment) “I don’t want to get killed by clowns or whatever the hell happens there.” Thomas rolls his eyes at that and Newt softens, satisfied.

“That movie sucked,” Thomas says, still a little sniffly. If Newt notices, he doesn’t show it.

“You’re just a wuss,” he counters, then sighs and adds, softer and a second later, “and I meant it when I said I missed you yesterday.”

Thomas melts, defenseless. He opens his mouth to ask,  _ and the boyfriend thing?  _ but stops himself short, Newt catching on just as he does, both their eyes widening—Thomas’ in realization of his mistake, Newt’s in challenge to go ahead and spit it out. 

Thomas bites his lip.

“Mm, what was that?”

“Uhm,” he stalls, smiling into his coffee. He is  _ not  _ going to be that guy that sees his ex for the first time in over a year—at a  _ wedding,  _ his ex’s  _ sister’s  _ wedding, thank you very much—and asks if he’s seeing anyone. Too fucking cliche. And Thomas is usually fine with cliche, but this is a little much. Newt seems to know exactly what train of thought Thomas has boarded because he just raises his eyebrows and downs the last of his drink, setting it down gingerly beside him and waiting expectantly. 

But really, even if neither of them wants to say it, or ask it—they both know. If either of them were seeing someone, Thomas wouldn’t have had a free room and Newt wouldn’t have needed a room to go to.

“Well.”

“Well,” Thomas echoes. For a second he thinks they both might start laughing again, but then he stops. “Wait,” he says, voice croaking around the word as his brain skips back a minute, processing Newt’s initial statement. “You’re coming back.”

The words hang in the air just a second too long before Newt nods, suddenly looking so small and scared, sat on the other side of the room. Breathless, he says, “Yeah. I’m coming ba—I’m coming home.” 

_ Home.  _ Newt is coming  _ home.  _ The deliberate choice of words makes Thomas feel like he’s the floor has disappeared underneath him and he’s floating, entire body tingling. That, or he needs to get his blood pressure checked. “That’s—” he starts, no idea where he’s going, “that’s cool. Good, uh—that’s good.”

_ Good lord.  _ Newt snorts and tucks his chin down to his chest to (poorly) hide his smile. “Yeah, it’s good,” he says, eyes shining. 

Now it’s Thomas’ turn to hide how dopey he looks. He doesn’t want to assume anything—just because Newt is coming home doesn’t mean that he’s going to want to try again, or that it would even  _ work  _ if they did—but  _ god _ is Thomas having a hard time not being excited at just the merest possibility of them getting to be  _ them  _ again. This time— _ if there is a this time,  _ he reminds himself dutifully—he’s going to fight. He’s going to fight for himself and he’s going to fight for Newt, and he’s not going to just sit there and let them crumble because they’re both too afraid to ask to be wanted. He’s going to hold onto this for as long as he can—for the version of himself: young, naive, afraid to be loved; for the version of himself that once had it and walked away. 

“Do you—” Apparently, the first fight is against his own tongue. He swallows, trying not to get lost in the immediate, attentive twitch of Newt’s eyebrows, the way his mouth falls just so slightly open, hope tumbling out with the muted exhale. “I know that it’s—it’s been uh, it’s been a year. And a bit—”  _ one year, five months, two weeks, and one day  _ “—but. Do you. Uh, do you think you’d want to—”

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t even done talking!” Thomas laughs, adrenaline draining from his body as he shakes his head: incredulous,  _ euphoric.  _

Newt smiles. Tears threaten to spill over. “I don’t care. Yes.” 

Thomas narrows his eyes. “What if I was asking you if you wanted to, like, join a bowling league? You hate bowling.”

“If that’s what you wanted.” He crosses his arms, not giving up. “I would go bowling for you.”

Thomas can already hear the sound of Newt’s laugh, clear and bright, over the sound of pins falling as the rest of their friends whoop and holler.  _ Focus, Thomas.  _ “What if… okay, what if your job wants you to move again?”

“Then we’ll figure it out. I don’t care. There’s nothing important that doesn’t include you, I know that now.” 

The way he says it is so earnest and with so much conviction—as if it’s obvious, as if he was a fool for ever  _ not  _ knowing it—that Thomas feels a sob bubbling up in his throat, tears burning in his eyes in an instant. “Oh,” he says dumbly. “But what if—”

“I don’t care,” Newt cuts him off matter-of-factly. “I don’t care. I messed this up once, and I’m not interested in finding an excuse to mess it up again.”

Thomas throws his hands up, mock defensive. “I’m just trying to be logical about this,” he says jokingly, regretting it the instant it leaves his mouth.  _ I’m just trying to be logical about this  _ is exactly what Newt had said when they first started fighting in earnest about the job offer. Thomas does a full-body cringe. “That was mean. I’m sorry.”

Newt purses his lips and shrugs. “I probably deserved that. You didn’t, back then.”

He’s right. It was cold, and a low blow, and it made Thomas feel like he was nothing more than a chess piece in Newt’s life, merely consequential and entirely disposable. “It’s okay,” Thomas says quietly. Newt gives him a small, shy smile; they have a lot of work to do, a lot of backlogged emotions to unpack—but they can do it _ together.  _

Thomas sighs, shaking off the suddenly somber mood. “Okay, but what if—”

_ “Tommy.” _

“Well, I was  _ gonna  _ say ‘what if I came over there and kissed you right now’, but I guess I’ll just stop asking questions then.” He shrugs, casual. 

Newt lets out a long, long exhale, and narrows his eyes, very clearly trying his best not to smile and very clearly failing. “Alright, you can ask that one,” he mutters. 

“No, no, it’s fine. I’m trying to  _ listen  _ more, y’know?” 

“Well so am I, so how about you—”

“I’m good, really.”

“I reckon cutting people off mid-sentence doesn’t really lend itself well to listening, now does it?”

Thomas pouts and stays resolutely silence. Newt rolls his eyes. 

“Fine. What if  _ I  _ came over  _ there  _ and kissed  _ you  _ right now?” He says it with the same cadence and tone that one might use if trying to appease a whiny child.

Thomas smiles, charade finally falling apart. He shrugs like,  _ I guess that would be alright.  _ Like,  _ okay, then do it.  _

(They end up meeting in the middle, anyway.)

A couple hours later, after—they are lying in bed, tangled together under the flimsy topsheet, and there is a knock on the door.

It takes a second for the realization to cut through the hazy afterglow, but after a beat both Thomas and Newt sit straight up, looking wildly between each other and the door.

The door that was just  _ knocked on _ , ie the door that presumably did not have a  _ wall of snow _ in front of it anymore.

“Holy shit,” Thomas mutters at the same time Newt says, “Clothes.”  _ Oh. Yeah, that.  _ They scramble out of bed and then clothes are flying across the room, each of them throwing sweaters and pants and socks to the other, pulling everything on in record time as they swear and try not to topple over.

There’s another knock, inpatient, then a voice: “Hey assholes,” Minho says, “rehearsal’s starting in ten and since neither of you  _ dipshits—”  _ another loud knock, just to accentuate, “—seem to have phone chargers, I’m doing you the courtesy of letting you know you—”

Thomas swings the door open, panting only slightly. “Thanks, Min,” he says, putting a hand on his hip. “We didn’t realize it had melted. We’ll get ready and meet you in five.”

Minho barely acknowledges him, just a bored nod thrown his way before he nosily peers around Thomas, scanning the room. Thomas glances over his shoulder just in time to see Newt flipping Minho off.

“You seem real happy to be the one to come relive us, shithead,” he greets, walking the line between pissed and affectionate. 

Thomas turns back to Minho for his reaction and sees his eyebrows shoot up, smile broadening to take up half his face. “I sure am, Newtie. Nice flannel, by the way. That new? Didn’t see it in your suitcase earlier.” 

And of course, when Thomas turns back once again, as if watching a tennis match, he finds that Newt is, in fact, wearing the flannel Thomas was previously sporting, Newt’s own sweater still strewn on the ground unmoved from where he’d left it after tearing it off to let Thomas trail a line of kisses down his chest. 

_ Hm.  _

Newt narrows his eyes and purses his lips as if mulling over the options: feign innocence or give in. What he chooses, a moment later, is an empty takeout container fished from the garbage and thrown across the room, missing both Thomas (accident) and Minho (intended target) by an inch and landing with a muted  _ thwap  _ into the snow outside. 

Minho  _ tsks.  _ “Violence is unbecoming, Newt. But hey, I guess Thomas is into that.” He reaches out and pokes a finger into Thomas’ neck where he knows there is a bright red mark blooming its way into a bruise. 

“Goodbye, Minho!” Thomas squeaks, smacking Minho’s arm away and swinging the door shut right in his face, cheeks burning the same red as his neck. He lets his head fall onto the door and then turns around, sliding onto his ass and looking at Newt sheepishly. 

Newt just leans against the wall—a substantially less tragic mirror of their chosen outposts hours ago, before any clothes had been thrown off and mistakenly thrown back on—and laughs, belly deep, hands coming up to cover his face. “Everyone is going to know by the time we get there, right?”

Thomas finally cracks, dissolving into his own fit of giggles. “Yeah.  _ Yeah.” _

As a final parting gift, Minho kicks the door. “I’m happy for you guys,” he yells, voice muffled, a second later adding an exasperated,  _ “finally!”  _ before crunching through the snow back towards the dining hall. 

In the end, they’re a couple minutes late to the rehearsal dinner, but no one is mad as they walk in—changed into their  _ own  _ clothes—holding hands. They get what is realistically  _ exactly  _ their fair share of sly, knowing looks and waggling eyebrows from across the room, but Thomas doesn’t mind. 

He thinks, as Newt squeezes his hand under the table, that just maybe, he’s getting the hang of it. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


__


End file.
